Boynton Beach synagogue members find last Czech survivor connected to their Holocaust Torah

On Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, May 5, members of Temple Beth Kodesh in Boynton Beach will recite the names of people who died in the Holocaust from Kutna Hora, Czechoslovakia, the town their Torah is from.

On Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, May 5, members of Temple Beth Kodesh in Boynton Beach will recite the names of people who died in the Holocaust from Kutna Hora, Czechoslovakia, the town their Torah is from.

A fraying, smudged but still readable Torah, rescued after the Holocaust, has forged an emotional connection to a lost Jewish community whose memory a small Boynton Beach synagogue is working to preserve.

Members of Temple Beth Kodesh have researched the history of the Torah, preserved by the Memorial Scrolls Trust in England, and managed to find the woman believed to be the last Jewish survivor of the Czech town, Kutna Hora, from which the Torah was rescued.

They have been emailing with the survivor, who lives in Prague, and hope to travel with fellow congregants to meet her.

The Torah had been sitting unused in a glass case in the Boynton Beach synagogue lobby for years until February, when the temple's president, Ronda Bellsey, attended a convention of Holocaust Torah owners in Hollywood and learned more about the relic's provenance.

At the convention, a scribe who restores aging Torahs said members should use the Torah, instead of leaving it in its case, since air circulation helps prevent deterioration of its browning parchment. Jews read from the Torah, or Old Testament, each Saturday during religious services.

Now congregants chant from this special Torah on every Sabbath. On May 5, which is Yom Hashoah, the international Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, they will for the first time read the names of the 101 Jewish residents of Kutna Hora who were sent to the Terezin concentration camp in 1942.

"Every time we talk about this, I struggle not to cry," said Bellsey, whose 102-year-old mother, Gertrude Pearlman, was a founding member of the congregation 40 years ago. "That town is living through us."

Kutna Hora, population 21,000, is about an hour from Prague and famous for the silver mines that brought great wealth to the city beginning in the 1200s. Its city center, with notable medieval architecture, is a world heritage site for UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations.

More than a dozen years ago, Beth Kodesh, a Conservative congregation, was loaned a Torah rescued after the Holocaust by the Memorial Scrolls Trust.

The trust, based in London, has saved more than 1,500 Torahs from the former Czechoslovakia and loaned them to more than 1,000 communities all over the world, according to its website.

In February, the Torah scribe pointed out a golden plate on the Torah's wooden support that said "1351." The number allowed members to trace the scroll to Kutna Hora.

With the help of the synagogue's cantor, Michael Glozman, a native Russian speaker, congregants found Dagmar Lieblova, the last Jewish survivor, who as a teenager survived the Terezin camp, as well as the horrific Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen camps during World War II.

Lieblova, 86, works today to educate students around the world about the Holocaust through the Terezin Initiative Institute, which she chairs. She said in an email she was thrilled to hear the Boynton Beach congregation had preserved the Torah.

"First of all I was surprised when I learned there is Torah from my hometown somewhere in Florida," she wrote to the Sun Sentinel. "And it is very touching for me to know that the names of my parents, my sister and my friends will be remembered at Yom Hashoah there."

Rita McLeod, Lieblova's daughter, who lives in Saskatchewan, Canada, said her mother does not remember the Torah but recalls attending the Kutna Hora synagogue with her grandparents.

"She is so touched that people on the other side of the world are remembering her," McLeod said.

Rabbi Michael Simon, Beth Kodesh's spiritual leader, said the connection to Kutna Hora has personalized congregants' perceptions of the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust is more than the number 6 million," Simon said. "Jews who lived in Kutna Hora had a synagogue and a life. The town is living through us."